Great steps forward

1670 participants from 150 countries, including 250 participants from the host country France, contributed to progress in several key areas at the ICANN meeting in Paris last week.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) held its 32nd meeting in Paris from 22 to 26 June. After discussions by several task forces, the conference concluded in an open General Assembly last Thursday on several areas which will have significant impact on the global community. Among other topics the ICANN Board approved a proposal to expand the world's Domain Name System and to work on adapting it to accommodate top level domain names in scripts such as Arabic, Cyrillic and other non-Latin scripts.

Other important decisions from the meeting:

• The adoption of two policy instruments to eliminate "domain tasting" (the practice of using the add grace period to register domain names in bulk to test their profitability)
• The adoption of public inquiry on a newly published report on the "fast track" for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) for country codes and a decision for staff to work with the community on how to implement the IDNs.

Norid participates in a task force working on issues connected to country code top level domains (see www.ccnso.icann.org). We concentrate on promoting Norwegian interests and securing the .no domain as a safe and stable top level domain which meets the needs of the Norwegian Internet society.

More from fra ICANN-møtet

• All GA decisions from Paris
• Comment from Ørnulf Storm, the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority (in Norwegian only)